The Core Blog » Socrateshttp://blogs.bu.edu/core
news, events, and commentary from the Arts & Sciences Core CurriculumThu, 30 Jul 2015 15:14:23 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.5A Little Platonic Advertisinghttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/05/28/a-little-platonic-advertising/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/05/28/a-little-platonic-advertising/#commentsWed, 28 May 2014 18:46:59 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=4101Summer’s in full swing, and we’ve all settled into our lazy summer habits, which include the constant struggle trying to keep warm for those of us staying in Boston. For those of you missing the Core office, don’t worry, we miss all of you too. To keep your spirits up, we found this wonderful comedic article from Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies. Who ever could have though Socrates’ logic could be applied to home cleaning products? Here’s an excerpt:

SOCRATES: Tell me, Glaucon, what does “clean” mean?

GLAUCON: Why, it means the opposite of dirty, Socrates.

SOCRATES: Surely it must mean something more than that.

GLAUCON: I don’t understand, Socrates.

SOCRATES: If “clean” means the opposite of “dirty,” then to clean is to rid a space of dirt or plague, yes?

GLAUCON: Yes, Socrates.

SOCRATES: So cleanliness is the complete obliteration of dirt, bacteria and unsightly stains. Am I right?

GLAUCON: Yes, Socrates.

SOCRATES: So to effectively clean, one must also sterilize, as a sterile surface is one that is also not dirty?

GLAUCON: Yes, Socrates.

The humor just keeps coming. Perhaps we, at Core, miss all the reading that takes us through the year so gracefully(even though the summer course is in full swing for the first time ever); perhaps we just couldn’t get enough of The Republic. Regardless, enjoy this Wacky Wednesday post and don’t forget to send us your selfies reading Core books!

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2014/05/28/a-little-platonic-advertising/feed/0Lecture: Plato’s Republichttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2012/11/29/lecture-platos-republic/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2012/11/29/lecture-platos-republic/#commentsThu, 29 Nov 2012 21:10:23 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=1844On November 20th, Professor Greg Fried (Suffolk University, Department of Philosophy), a long-time friend and colleague of the Core, lectured to the students of CC101 about Plato’s Republic. Here we offer an excerpt from his lecture:

MORPHEUS: Do you want to know what it is, Neo? The Matrix is everywhere; it’s all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

NEO: What truth?

MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, was born into bondage… … kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself… This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back. You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.

So, Neo is a prisoner in the Cave, or in the Matrix.

This looks like a movie theater. Plato was the first cinematographer! The fire acts as a projector, casting an image on the wall. Socrates says there are people walking along this Cave holding things up above the wall, and they cast these projections that the prisoners observe and think is the whole of reality.

Something has to happen to dislodge the prisoners facing this Cave. Socrates thinks about the release:

“Consider, I said, what their release and healing from bonds would be like if something of this sort were by nature to happen to them.” (This is the offering of the blue and red pill.) “Take a man who is released an suddenly compelled to stand up, to turn his neck around, to walk and look up towards the light and whoever is doing this is in pain and because he is dazzled is unable to make out those things whose shadows he saw before. What do you think he’d say if someone were to tell him that before he saw nothings, while now, because he is somewhat nearer to what is?” (Morpheus’ claim) “… don’t you suppose he would be at a loss as to what is and what is not true?”

In this article by Carlos Fraenkel of Boston Review, we learn that Brazil’s public education policy has surprising stipulation: According to a 2008 law, students are required to study philosophy for three years in high school. The law is a political reaction against the country’s recent history: “The official rationale…is that philosophy ‘is necessary for the exercise of citizenship,’” and from 1971-1985, the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil outlawed philosophy, replacing it with classes on citizenship and loyalty to the state. The military leaders seem to have recognized something Core students are taught: that studying philosophy creates an endless chain of questions about freedom, enlightenment, equality, reason, and justice, all principles alien to an autocratic regime. Brazil’s relatively new democracy and its public education have taken active resistance against creating the conditions for such a regime, teaching students to ask these questions about the world around them.

The article (warning: it’s a bit lengthy) goes farther, questioning the implementation, wisdom, and principles of this new practice. Almira Ribiero, a philosophy teacher in a poor, violent, and racially segregated neighborhood in Salvador, insists that students come out of the cave, learn about the world, and then bring those lessons back down before the fire and apply them. She believes, as do other supporters of the 2008 law, that teaching students about what justice and democracy mean will help them to become more engaged citizens, and that examining reason and fairness will help them work toward a clearer idea of equality. This is part of the Core mission: by examining why we do things, discussing the basis for our mores and morals, and trying to live what Socrates called an examined life, we make better choices for ourselves and for others.

Other Brazilians, including many academics, are not so sure. They don’t believe that all students can be made to understand Kant, Socrates, or Hume, or that everyone can make theirs an examined life. “To make them question the beliefs and customs they were brought up in isn’t useful because they can’t replace them with examined ones,” Fraenkel explains, a point applicable in Athens or in Salvador. “So Socrates ended up pushing [Athenian citizens] into nihilism,” and nihilists do not make engaged citizens. The students in Ms. Ribiero’s class disagree. They protested to Fraenkel that “if you can’t establish a just society democratically without the citizens knowing what justice is, and if you can’t know what justice is without philosophy, it would be impossible to achieve justice in an unjust society like Brazil if studying philosophy presupposes justice.”

Core students are self-selected to attempt the examined life: we sign up for the program and continue in it for two years knowing that we will be asked questions with no correct answer. Students in Brazil are not given a choice, but does that make them unequal to the task? Fraenkel relates an engaging and enlightening discussion from his day with the students, and examines the role philosophy plays in building up this new society. Core lasts only for two years, and sends students on to a wide variety of disciplines; how to we, in our more solidly established system, bring Plato’s lessons back to our own cave?

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2012/02/08/philosophy-as-civic-education-in-brazil/feed/0Picturing a Core discussionhttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2011/06/24/picturing-a-core-discussion/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2011/06/24/picturing-a-core-discussion/#commentsFri, 24 Jun 2011 20:10:45 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=1167In May 2011, a photographer visited Prof. Eckel’s CC102 seminar classroom. His pictures capture, vividly, the thrill and pleasure of deep, intellectual engagement that shows in the faces of Prof. Eckel and his students as they discuss Socrates.

The problem with storytelling is that it appeals to the desirous part of the soul and not the rational — that’s why Socrates has such a problem with it. So, my question is: Would it be just to ban Sophocles and his plays in the city of Athens, when they clearly show a deep understanding of the human condition?

— Stephen Esposito, associate professor of classical studies and instructor in the Core Humanities, giving an example of the way individual liberty and civic interests can come into conflict, during the panel debate on democracy which took place during the last lecture of CC101 for this fall semester. Prof. Michael Corgan (International Relations), Prof. David Roochnik (Philosophy), and Prof. Jay Samons (Classics) also took part in this interdisciplinary discussion.

]]>http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2010/12/07/from-a-cc101-debate-on-democracy/feed/1Analects of the Core: Plato on the idea of goodhttp://blogs.bu.edu/core/2010/11/22/analects-of-the-core-53/
http://blogs.bu.edu/core/2010/11/22/analects-of-the-core-53/#commentsMon, 22 Nov 2010 22:07:05 +0000http://blogs.bu.edu/core/?p=411

Liken the domain revealed through sight to the prison home, and the light of the fire in it to the sun’s power; and, in applying the going up and the seeing of what’s above to the soul’s journey up to the intelligible place… A god doubtless knows if it happens to be true. At all events, this is the way the phenomena look to me: in the knowable the last thing to be seen, and with considerable effort, is the idea of good; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is in fact the cause of all that is right and fair in everything…